Our session started with a discussion on fungus problems with Bettina Red Robin and with a number of different fruit trees – especially apples and pears. Various remedies are being tested, and a report back to the group will prove very useful once the results are in.

With the prospect of long hot summers, where all the rain arrives in just a few hours per month, summers are taxing some of our gardeners. Do you opt for a lot of expensive watering, or do you opt for water collection and conservation, or do you opt for different planting? A wide selection of drought tolerant plants were recommended during the session.

We continued with a report on our over-wintered dried-out pelargoniums, another on a Two-cup Seedling test, and another on the price of seeds compared with plugs and bareroot plants.

We finished with an example of living art (a picture composed of coloured succulents), and free exchange of white indian paintbrush plants, and a hunt for rudbeckia seeds. The prospects for this summer are all the more attractive now!